Hello,
Yeah, I released my first game Solitaire Siege about a month ago. Itís had really nice reviews from the smaller sites and everyone that plays it, seems to like it (one site even re-reviewed it again due to people complaining about the review not been good enough, so the game definitely has it fans) but our big, big mistake was that we didnít start to promote the game before it was already out and even then Iím not really a sales man and I always like to play things down which is not the way to be when your trying to get people to look at your game.

Sales are really poor, much worse then I expected to be honest. They did pick up a bit after releasing the free version (saying that I only think the free version has been downloaded 2000+ times), but without a lot of buzz behind your game your not going to get seen in the App store. So I guess doing well on the iPhone comes down to 40% game and 60% marketing, if not more so on the marketing side.

The way I look at it is that Iíve made a really good game which people really enjoy and I had fun making and itís been a huge learning experience for my next game. All I need to do next time is try to make people aware of my game before hand and to get people to try it.

I personally think that if your game is fun to play and doesnít rely on just pretty gf/x then it still stands a good chance of sell for a long time, so donít give up and keep trying to promote your game as much as you can.

Yikes! This game does look interesting, but man, you really took a brave gamble by mashing up these themes.

Cookie Bonus Solitaire had a good run, because its name invites people to click on it and find out just what the heck it is. "Solitaire Siege" sounds like an obscure solitaire variant. I suspect most of the folk clicking on Solitaire Siege are people interested in traditional card games that end up being turned off by the war theme.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mike_011972

Hello,
Yeah, I released my first game Solitaire Siege about a month ago. Itís had really nice reviews from the smaller sites and everyone that plays it, seems to like it (one site even re-reviewed it again due to people complaining about the review not been good enough, so the game definitely has it fans) but our big, big mistake was that we didnít start to promote the game before it was already out and even then Iím not really a sales man and I always like to play things down which is not the way to be when your trying to get people to look at your game.

Sales are really poor, much worse then I expected to be honest. They did pick up a bit after releasing the free version (saying that I only think the free version has been downloaded 2000+ times), but without a lot of buzz behind your game your not going to get seen in the App store. So I guess doing well on the iPhone comes down to 40% game and 60% marketing, if not more so on the marketing side.

The way I look at it is that Iíve made a really good game which people really enjoy and I had fun making and itís been a huge learning experience for my next game. All I need to do next time is try to make people aware of my game before hand and to get people to try it.

I personally think that if your game is fun to play and doesnít rely on just pretty gf/x then it still stands a good chance of sell for a long time, so donít give up and keep trying to promote your game as much as you can.

@Stroffolino
Yeah, I thought about that, but I didn't want to make anything to sweet and the update will has normal playing cards in it, and to be honest, I guessed that out of the millions of iPods out there, it would still get a decent amount of downloads and then bank on word of mouth for the other sales.

It's a learning experience I guess for everyone and my last attempt to get some sales is to try throwing some money at some web adverts and see if that helps.

Well I'm the owner of Cascadia Games. We launched in April more or less dedicated to the iPlatform. Since then we've released five games and one developer kit. Nobody's getting rich but we're just getting warmed up.

We've launched games at $0.99, $1.99, and $2.99. And in all honesty the more expensive games make the most money, surprise surprise. Going on sale is a nice way of getting a little bit of extra attention due to all the sales-monitoring sites out there. But I wouldn't put anything on sale longer than a week personally, as the returns diminish after the first couple of days. And I tend to only do a temporary price drop if sales have really tanked for a certain app (for reasons unknown).

I agree with most folks here that time is the biggest risk. Hence why I tend to do a lot of iteration. We've got the 4 "mini chess" games running from the same basic template. Xeno Sola, our Carcassonne-style game, may also get a twin project. And I'm currently pushing hard to develop a Halloween kart racing game, built off the TGB Kart Kit, which I developed.

Honestly I don't know how to market either. I have one ad currently running. It sits on a very targeted website. Though now that I think about the banner, it doesn't do a good job telling customers what the game is! I tend to just blog, talk on forums, etc... whatever marketing is free. I don't like to pay for anything that I don't have to!

For me, a lot of the autoresponder emails when I sent sites my game said that they also had advertising opportunities. Some said that you'll get reviewed sooner if you pay them. None actually said that you would get a _good_ review if you paid them though. I can't dig through all my email now, but here's some of the responses.

I got this from iPhone Footprint. I didn't pay them, and they did, eventually, review my game (one of the 2 sites that did, actually, and I sent promo codes to about 35 sites).

Quote:

We just received your app review request at iphonefootprint, and wanted to let you know that weíre working on it. We usually get more requests than we can handle, so it might be some time before we can actually review the app.

But if you want the review done quickly, try our expedited review offer at just $20. That doesnít guarantee a positive review , but it does help get the word out there, tells our regular readers about your app, and hey, it pays some of the the bills for us!

I got this from AppCraver (who never reviewed my game):

Quote:

We have several other additional options for you to make sure your app gets
seen by AppCraver readers.

We can provide an expedited review for a $100 fee. This will get your app
reviewed within 6 business days. Paying to expedite your review does not
guarantee a positive review. However, we will contact you prior to
publishing a review that scores lower than 5/10.

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